Chapter 8
Katra’s brain felt like a cotton ball. A nasty, dirty cotton ball.
She tried to open her eyes, but only managed a little flutter of her eyelids as the drugs still managed to rage through her system. She was vaguely aware of the feeling of a cold, hard surface beneath her as she lay on stomach.
“Don’t worry, precious. The drugs will wear off soon enough.”
The voice was unfamiliar, masculine, and had an odd edge to it that she neither recognized nor liked. Whatever it was, it left her feeling more than a little unnerved, like it had planted bugs under her skin to creep and crawl around.
That feeling of impending doom was back in her gut.
Once more, she tried to force her eyes open as her shifter immune system fought to filter out the drug, and this time she managed to open her eyes a crack—and was rewarded with a piercing bright light that made her flinch.
“Slow there, precious. Slow and steady. Don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
There was that creepy-crawly feeling under her skin again, in her mind and in her bones, forcing her to clench her eyes shut as if she could block out the voice by closing her eyes.
“I gave you what you wanted, Alekter.” The familiar voice belonged to Detrick, and Katra felt her anger rise for the first time since regaining consciousness. “Now, please, please. Let me have A—” He was abruptly cut off by a loud, sharp smack, followed immediately by the sound of a body hitting the floor.
“So rude. Stealing my introduction from me. Ah, well. What can you do? It’s so hard to find reliable help these days, especially since you stole my handy dragons from me. But it’s okay—I forgive you. After all, you’re so much more valuable to me than they are.” Moments after the stranger stopped speaking, Katra felt a sudden and sharp, burning pain spread across the center of her back.
Right over her runes.
The burning pain quickly became unbearable, and she bit her lip to keep the scream threatening to force its way out from between her lips. She would not give this creepy the luxury of hearing her scream, of knowing that anything he did caused her pain. As the pain finally began to subside, she felt an odd warmth in her chest, both comforting and unnerving at the same time.
Her power. Her fire magic, coming to life, and within that magic, she could hear small, tiny sound, like a baby bird.
Her phoenix. She could feel her phoenix. For the first time in her life, she felt the wild freedom that was her phoenix, felt her unfurling in her chest like a living being. Because she was living being.
And she was finally, finally free.
The moment was quickly overshadowed by the sound of Alekter’s voice, cutting through her pain-laced joy like a jagged, rusty knife. “Now, now, little phoenix. Don’t go getting any ideas. We can’t have you coming out to play just yet. I have big plans for your particular brand of chaos, but it must come about in my time, at my urging. You and I will do so many great things, little bird. We will bring nations, entire worlds to their knees before us. Even the gods themselves will tremble at our power. There will be no one who can contest our reign. But all in good time, precious. All in good time.”
Katra forced her eyes open, and this time they opened fully to take in the creature standing before her.
He was tall, very tall, and very, very slim, not an ounce of muscle to be seen on him. His hair was long and black, and even though it was tied back in a low ponytail at the base of his neck, it was still very clear that it was in desperate need of a wash. His skin was pallid, like he never saw sunlight, and he had a large, bird-like nose that was the prominent feature on his face.
At least, until she saw his dead, black eyes.
It was then that she realized what the ‘something extra’ in his voice was, that little niggling note that left her feeling unnerved and…unclean.
It was 100% pure, homegrown insanity.
Alekter the sorcerer was mad. Not metaphorically, but literally, clinically mad.
“Ah, there she is. My beautiful, golden-eyed beauty. You have no idea how long I’ve waited for you, how much I’ve long for you—and realize that I am over 3000 years old when I say that. I have waited for you for millennia.” He reached out to stroke her cheek almost lovingly, and, though she tried, she couldn’t help the flinch his touch elicited, nor the disgusted curl of her upper lip.
Before she saw it coming, his hand had pulled back far enough to deliver a sharp slap across her face, throwing her head violently to the side and surprising her with is hidden strength.
“Don’t be rude, little bird. Remember—I have waited for you for many lifetimes. You are mine, precious. We are meant to bring about a new age. Together.” He stroked her now hurting cheek again, that same insane, loving look in his black eyes.
Having learned her lesson the first time, she didn’t budge, simply staring at him with what she hoped was an empty look, and not the hate and fear she actually felt. “Why me?” She rasped out, coughing at the dryness in her throat, and an expression of surprise must have crossed her face, because Alekter smiled at her almost tenderly.
If only it weren’t for the underlying insanity his eyes still held.
“It’s the damn drugs he gave you, precious. This was why I gave everyone a paralyzing spell. But, of course, that wouldn’t have worked on you, now would it? That’s why I had to combine machine and magic, because I knew magic alone would never be enough. Not when I found you. Your beautiful fire would just eat right through it, wouldn’t it?”
She didn’t respond, and he didn’t seem to care much whether she did or didn’t.
“That’s why, my little bird. That’s why it has to be you. Because of your special, perfect magic. Because no matter how much power my machine drains from you, you will never die. Not fully. You will simply rise again from the ashes, just like the proverbial bird you are. My perfect little battery. Never dying, never failing, just giving and giving all that I care to take.” With a soft, dreamy sigh, he stroked her swollen cheek once more before he looked up at something behind her and motioned towards it.
Moments later, something cold, wet, and misty fell over her, and she looked up at the one, heart-stopping thing that she hoped never to see in her life.
A shade.
Its eyes were entirely black, like empty voids, as it stared down at her blankly. It had no nose, no mouth, and no ears, and its body was less of a body and more of a slightly-corporeal black mist that vaguely resembled a human.
If a human were able to live as nothing more than skin and bones.
Her mind tumbled back in time to a history lesson from when she was 9, maybe 10, of the battle between the sorcerer Fontaine and the Great Witches of Romania. In this battle, the sorcerer Fontaine had used his powers to summon an army of shades—fearsome, demonic beings on the lower end of the demonic hierarchy. They were mainly mindless, killing machines, with no more comprehension of higher thought processing than a fish has comprehension of a smartphone. But unlike fish, shades were capable of possessing a human, shifter, witch, or any other supernatural being, and would then slowly drain them from the inside until the person looked much like a shade did in its almost-corporeal form.
Like death incarnate.
In the end, the sorcerer Fontaine was destroyed by the very shade army he had summoned. There was no one who could control a shade, much less an army of them.
So how the hell was Alekter managing it?
Katra knew there would be no fighting this shade, even with the full use of her magic. Her shifter power was completely useless on anything demonic. The only thing that could stop a shade was divine intervention.
And she highly doubted any gods or goddesses were going to be intervening on her behalf tonight.
“Take her downstairs. Treat her gently, though. I cannot break your body, my little phoenix, for it is essential to my plans. Your spirit, however—that, I must break. And then, we can be broken together.” With one final, dismissive wave, he turned away from her and focused in the still form of what she just realized was Detrick. The wolf shifter’s head was tilted at an odd angle, and once again, she marveled at how this insane, stick-thin sorcerer could muster so much strength as to snap the neck of a shifter with a single blow.
Actually, from the sound of it, he broke Detrick’s neck with a single backhand. He literally slapped the man to death.
Katra shook her head in disbelief as the shade grasped onto her arm with is misty hand, and the sensation was so cold that it quickly became painful, as if he were made of ice and not mist.
The shade dragged her roughly down a number of hallways, and in her despair, she completely neglected to keep tracking of all the turns and flights of stairs, only half-noticing that the shade never walked, but rather floated. Which, she supposed, was to be expected of something made out of black mist.
After a while of traversing the twisting hallways and numerous staircases, Katra presently found herself in what appeared to be a dungeon. It was a starting sight—all cold, brick walls and no sunlight—and the smell of it bit into her nose like disgusting combination of rotten garbage and old vomit. She quickly found herself wishing she didn’t have the enhanced shifter nose all shifters were blessed—or in this case, cursed—with, and she wondered half-heartedly if maybe one of the shades would be so kind as to give her something with which to plug her nose.
She chuckled aloud at her own ridiculous thought processing.
The shade didn’t react. Not that she expected otherwise.
It stopped before what appeared to be an empty cell, and she grimly noted the sensation of silver lining the bars of the cell; they lined every cell, to be exact, undoubtedly the only reason why there were a large number of shifters, witches, mages, and who knew what other kinds of supernaturals trapped behind them.
She could sense them more than anything, although peering closely, she could also see them, even in the dimness of the dark dungeon.
Once again, she cursed her shifter abilities.
They were all dirty, emaciated, barely hanging on to what little life they had left. Their dull, empty eyes followed her without emotion, though a few still seemed to have just enough sense of self left to hold the barest hint of emotion in their hollowed depths.
Pity.
They pitied her.
Because they knew exactly what was coming her way.
The shade threw her into the cell—clearly not taking his master’s order to heart—before slamming the cell door shut. It then slowly drifted away, and she watched as each of the supernaturals it passed cringed away from it, even though they were all already huddled into the farthest corners of their cells. There was no one on earth who didn’t hold a healthy dose of terror towards a shade, and these people obviously had even more reason than anyone else to fear them.
Huddled there on floor for a moment, feeling the weight of misery growing heavy over her liked a thick, suffocating blanket, one that she wanted desperately to kick off but could not seem to muster the energy to do so. For just a minute, she would let the hopelessness of the situation pull her down into the dark, murky depths of despair.
Fierce, black eyes suddenly popped into her mind, accompanied by a disparaging look and the sound of Kaster’s rough voice, saying ‘typical girly shit right there’. Her ire momentarily rose to the surface, only to be squashed back down by the powerful misery of the dank dungeon and its hopeless inhabitants.
Ocean blue eyes, filled with humor, drifted into her head then, and she could almost hear Finley’s laughter as she teased him. She wondered if he was okay, wondered what he was doing, what he was thinking. Was he worried about her? Of course, he was. That’s the kind of guy he was. He was her friend, her one and only friend in this world.
But despair still clung to her like a sickness, even as she stared at Finley’s ocean grey eyes in her mind.
What could she possibly do in this situation?
‘You need to gather more information’, came Marclan’s quiet, reasoning voice spoke in her mind.
Heaving herself off the floor more slowly than she would have normally, Katra crawled towards the door of the cell and gave it a tentative test pull, not at all surprised to find it firmly locked. It had been worth a try though, she supposed.
“Hey. Hey! Can any of you hear me?” It was probably as useless as her trying to open the cell door, but she may as well try anyway. She felt like Finley would have been proud of her for trying. “Come on. Someone’s gotta be conscious enough to give me an idea of what’s going on here.”
She was met with the silence she fully expected.
Until a soft, feminine voice filtered through the muggy, rank air.
“Katra?”
While she was glad to have someone finally respond to her, the fact that this someone knew her name threw her off more than a bit. Who could she possibly know in this place? Especially who of the female variety.
Like she told Finley, she didn’t know any ladies.
She didn’t know anyone.
“Katra?” The voice came again, a little stronger this time, and ever so slightly familiar.
Peering through the darkness, Katra tried to force her shifter vision into sharper focus, straining to see the owner of the voice.
A small shape took form before her eyes in the next cell over, and she began to make out the lean form of a woman, a little bit taller than her, and possibly her age—it was hard to tell. Next, she was able to make out long, thick, dark hair, even darker than the night sky.
Her heart skipped a beat.
Finally, as she strained harder to peer into the dark, a pair of silvery-blue eyes became visible, eyes that quickly filled tears of joy.
Katra gasped sharply, the sound filling the silent cells like the boom of a canon.
“Addi?!”